Sociophysics

Serge Galam is a theoretical physicist specialized in disordered systems with doctorate degrees from Paris and Tel-Aviv. After being a research associate at the City College of New York and an assistant professor at New York University, he joined the CNRS in Paris where he is currently working at the Research Center in Applied Epistemology at the 'Ecole Polytechnique. He is the proud father of sociophysics, a new field of study that he envisioned and initiated more than thirty years ago. He has authored over 120 research papers in the best international journals, three books,  over 60 popular articles and 30 book chapters and given about 300 talks throughout the world.

Part 1: Sociophysics: setting the frame.- What is sociophysics about?.- The question: do humans behave like atoms?.- Sociophysics: the origins.- Sociophysics: weaknesses, achievements and challenges.- Part II: Discovering the wonderful (and maybe scary) world of Sociophysics.- Sociophysics: an overview of emblematic founding models.- Universal features of group decision making.- The dictatorship paradox of democratic bottom-up voting.- The dynamics of spontaneous coalition-fragmentation versus global coalitions.- Terrorism and the percolation of passive supporters.- The modeling of opinion dynamics.- By way of caution.- Part III: Democratic voting in bottom-up hierarchical structures: from advantages and setbacks to dictatorship paradoxes.- Highlights of the Part.- Basic mechanisms for the perfect democratic structure.- Going to applications.- Touching on a fundamental aspect of nature, both physical and human.- Dictatorship paradoxes of Democratic voting in hierarchical structures.- Part IV: The risky business of alliances in bottom-up democratic voting with three-choice competition.- Bottom-up democratic voting in a three-choice competition.- So sorry, that's the end of the tour!.- I thank you.